September Earning

This month’s payment is huge enough that I start thinking of doing something drastic, but some particular circumstances prevent me from doing it right away.

The cleansing post panda

The “cleansing” seemed to work good. I deleted or altered a lot of pages containing duplicate contents and one of my site regain its ranks. Going to do this with 2 more sites, but have issues with some of my contractors. Hopefully, I could get it done this month.

Seventh Site

My last site is doing super poorly; it got several visitors already, but the average time they stayed on page is about 15 seconds or so. I think I missed the point in this niche and didn’t give them what they want. My only solution is searching for a provider that truly understand the market and I think I have found him (judging from 2 articles he made), but it still have to be tested and I really have no time to spare for that.

So that’s that, site #7 pending while I’m trying to revive site #5 and #6. I might work on site #4 in the future, but already gave up on site #3. Weight-loss niche is just too much for me. I get about 700 visitors/month but nobody has bought anything for the last several months. Heck, my neglected first site is doing even better!

A thought on conversion

Anyway, I no longer believe more visitors=more sales. More and more proofs have been presented before me to believe it’s just a myth:
– My own experience: my 4th site got 3k visitors in a month and make ONE lousy sales.
– My best performed site currently only have around 1k visitors/month
– Clayton’s site experiment: 9k visitors with $300 in sales. I believe he got better conversion rate in other sites.
– Justin’s site (affiliatefreedom.net). Last update (May) he said he make 1k/day. That’s 30k visitors per month and he got around $200/week.

“Understanding the market” seemed more and more crucial. Before, I was to busy generating traffic that doesn’t realize this. It’s not like I’m a traffic-expert now, but at the very least I try to pick suitable writer for specific niche and make an attempt to understand the market better. The 7th site is just a series of research-keywords-and-throw-them-to-contractor. She wrote as she wished and I thought that’s good enough. Well, I was wrong.

Future plan

Affiliate marketing is good and lots of people gain much from it, but now I think it’ll be even harder for us. I mean, giving “good recommendation” doesn’t seem that nice once the person find out that you get money from product he bought based on your recommendation. It’s not pure help, it’s help with string-attached, thus it become less credible and questionable. This is also why a lot of people in IM world give recommendation with *this is not affiliate link* attached. They want you to know they got nothing from it, thus the recommendation could be trusted.

I know some of us doing honest business and recommend only proven and thoroughly-researched product, but most aren’t. And every development by major authorities seemed aimed to crush those scammers (and grind us with them).
– The new policy to write that you get something in return if the visitor buy a product promoted
– Google cash: banned
– You can’t use review page as landing page in AdWords anymore; they called it bridge page (a page with sole reason to drive traffic to other site). I tried this and they threaten to close my AdWords account.
– Every Google update seemed devised to counter SEO method a lot of affiliate marketers are depend on. They don’t put too much weight in meta keywords anymore, they kick content-farm site and thus lower the effectiveness of blog network, they hit article directories PR, etc
– Web 2.0 owner also hate affiliates, you can see from their new policies, especially in HubPages and Squidoo.

All SEO method, regardless white, gray, or black are aimed to “trick” Google algorithm by giving data that doesn’t represent actual public opinion. For every new trick in SEO, Google will release updates to counter it. We live from Google while fighting it at the same time.

Thus:
– Depending on SEO is short-sighted. It’s a constant battle; it’s like walking over a layer of thin ice and you don’t know when it’ll break with you on it. With so much change over the course of 1-2 years, how would you sustain a business for 10-20 years? You need to be able to access your target market without depending on Google.

James Pruitt has said this thousands of times and I know he’s right, but I just don’t know other method and social-media marketing is just too overwhelming for me.

– People despise you for recommending digital product and found out that you got something in return of their purchase. They feel deceived. I’ve seen a guy promoting a CB product on forum; the reply is “hey look guys! Viral marketing!”

On the other hand, people are OK with buying from e-commerce site with those large “BUY” and “Checkout” buttons. Perhaps being blatantly trying to sell something means you don’t have any hidden agenda?

I’m not really sure yet, but perhaps having your own product or selling physical goods are better business model in the future. You can utilize PPC, banner ads, press release, facebook fan page without having people or the authority suspect you of solely trying to send traffic and get commissions.

14 Responses to September Earning

wow ! 7k $ comission! But i somehow cant seem to feel that you are happy about it even though it is probably more than three times of your best months before?

and regarding the SEO part – i dont fully agree with you.. its a good thing that it is also getting harder, for it will get rid of a lot of competition. i read somewhere else about seo has not changed over the years in one bit at all, and that i think is totally true

the person said that SEO has always been giving what your visitors want or what your visitors are looking for, and that has never changed throughout the years at all

and no matter what methods they use to rank sites in the future, an alogorithm will still be an alogorithm… just that it might be more difficult to game it

wow ! 7k $ comission! But i somehow cant seem to feel that you are happy about it even though it is probably more than three times of your best months before?

and regarding the SEO part – i dont fully agree with you.. its a good thing that it is also getting harder, for it will get rid of a lot of competition. i read somewhere else about seo has not changed over the years in one bit at all, and that i think is totally true

the person said that SEO has always been giving what your visitors want or what your visitors are looking for, and that has never changed throughout the years at all

and no matter what methods they use to rank sites in the future, an alogorithm will still be an alogorithm… just that it might be more difficult to game it

i also have a site that gets 6000-7000 a month right now but makes less than 200 a month.. lol… don mind saying it , its the growing taller niche.. think the people are mostly teenagers so don have credit cards to buy ..

Well, I DO happy and frustrated at the same time because I don’t have a clue if I’ll get this much on the next month. I’m not even sure I can get tenth of it! I might have labeled myself “entrepreneur”, but deep down I guess I can’t really get rid of my “employee” mindset of wanting steady incomes per month. I mean, sure it’s small, but at least I know how much I’ll get. Nowadays, I can’t even sure if I’ll get $100 or $1k next month..

7K visitors is HUGE! I remember seeing my first 3k visitors/month and I can’t seem to close my analytics account. Just grinning by myself starring at the numbers. How many first page keywords you have to achieve 7k?

It is #2 -#4 for how to grow taller and how to get taller but somehow I think the niche sucks cos a lot of teenagers (below 18) ..

I never seen 6-7k a month as a lot of visitors for some reason lol.. I was getting 400 visitors everyday to the site but not much conversions.. some other sites I have only 1000 visitors per month but doesnt convert at all either..

“how to grow taller” has 49500 exact search/month and your site is on the #2 spot. No wonder you got so many visitors.

Anyway, even with a site filled 3 spots on the first G page, the number is quite frightening. All of them got good backlinks and on-page SEO. Truly a keyword I would not try to rank. What are your off page SEO strategy? I mean, with time, I could get 1.2k backlinks like you but I’ve proven it myself that even 2k backlinks isn’t enough to let me stay on the first page.

Not really any secret for off page SEO.. but I could say mass social bookmarking works very well now ..

I ordered 1000+ social bookmarking links (35$) in a single blast and that alone got it to 2nd page, then signed up for an ALN(Authority link network) network service ($60+) and submitted to 10-20high PR article directories myself and finally to the major blog networks (AMA/UAW/AR/etc..)

I personally think that adding content to your site and interlinking all your pages is more important..as I was quite surprised to rank for a lot of other long tails without even touching them at all

Well and yeah I was not really sure whether that site would stay on the 2nd spot because it was fluctuating a lot so I sold it as I felt it won’t be worth it to try and keep it there as it was not converting well.. (for the amount of visitors I get)

Social bookmark huh? I always look down on them because they’re no-follow and I seem never have significant visitors from them. But of course, I never blast 1000 bookmarking at once.

Yes, getting to 1st page isn’t the end. Keeping them on the first page is the bigger problem.

It’s not actually ‘sales’. I think there’s major news released on October so suddenly everyone just trade at that time and some of them trade huge amount. Since forex broker work on revenue-share based, I got that much. I believe it’s not a single trader though, so you could assume it as many “sales”.